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CHICAGO — The reduction of blood capillaries at the back of the eye could be a new non-invasive way to diagnose early cognitive impairments, precursor of Alzheimer's disease in which individuals become forgetful , reports a recently published study on Northwestern Medicine.
Scientists have detected these vascular changes in the human eye non-invasively, with an infrared camera and without the need for dyes or expensive MRI scans. The back of the eye is optically accessible to a new type of technology (OCT angiography) capable of quantifying capillary changes with unprecedented accuracy and unprecedented resolution, making the eye an ideal mirror for what is happening in the eye. brain.
"Once our findings are validated, this approach could potentially provide an additional type of biomarker to identify people at high risk of developing Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Amani Fawzi, a professor of Ophthalmology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. doctor. "These people could then be followed more closely and could be prime candidates for new therapies aimed at slowing the progression of the disease or preventing the onset of dementia associated with Alzheimer's disease. "
Therapies for Alzheimer's disease are more effective if they are started before significant brain damage and cognitive decline have occurred, added Fawzi, professor of ophthalmology Cyrus Tang and Lee Jampol.
The study was published on April 2 in PLOS ONE.
It is known that retinal blood flow and vessel density are decreased in patients with Alzheimer's disease, but it was not known whether these changes were also manifested in people with Alzheimer's disease. Early Alzheimer's or mild and forgetful cognitive impairment presenting a higher risk of progression to dementia.
Multicentric trials could be implemented using this simple technology in Alzheimer's clinics. Larger datasets will be important to validate the marker, as well as to find the best algorithm and combination of tests to detect high-risk subjects, said Sandra Weintraub, co-author and professor of neurology and psychiatry and science behavior in Feinberg.
Weintraub and his team at the Northwestern Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease recruited 32 participants who had undergone cognitive tests corresponding to the type of forgetful cognitive impairment, and matching them to subjects undergoing a cognition test as normal as normal. their age. All individuals underwent ocular imaging with OCT angiography. The data was analyzed to determine if the vascular capillaries located at the back of the eye were different between the two groups of individuals.
The team now hopes to be able to correlate these findings with other types of more conventional (but also more invasive) Alzheimer's biomarkers and to explore longitudinal changes in ocular parameters in these subjects.
"Ideally, retinal findings would be well correlated with other brain biomarkers," Fawzi said. "Long-term studies are also important to see if retinal capillaries will change more dramatically in those who decline and progressively develop Alzheimer's dementia."
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Yi Stephanie Zhang, Nina Zhou, Marie Knoll Brianna, Sahej Samra and Mallory R. Ward are other Northwestern writers.
This research was funded by the Illinois Society for the Prevention of Blindness and the National Institutes of Health (National Institutes of Health).
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